Ancher, who went to the fishing village of Skagen in Denmark and married the daughter of the owner of Brøndums Hotel. We know her better as that great character painter Anna Ancher. Skagen became a mecca for Scandinavian and German painters, writers and composers. We now leap forward to January 1913. An exhibition of Scandinavian art toured the USA and arrived in the city of Buffalo, near Niagara Falls. Two Canadian artists, J E H MacDonald and Lawren Harris, crossed the border and were thrilled at what they saw. Harris recalled: “Here were a large number of paintings that corroborated our ideas...here was an art bold, vigorous and uncompromising, embodying direct first-hand experience of the great North”. Macdonald continued “one we liked especially” was Otto Hesselbom‟s “Our Country”: ”the rich quiet colour, the detailed Lawren Harris “Snow (II)” drawing of the forest masses, and the fine receding values of the distances shimmering into the sky”. Highly important for Harris‟s painting was the Norwegian Harald Sohlberg, and also the Swede Gustaf Fjaestad, described as “perhaps the most attractive of all”. To conclude this trans-continental story, Harris and MacDonald were founder members of „The Group of Seven‟ in 1920, and in 2012 their Dulwich exhibition (closes 8 January) travels to Oslo. In 2005, a work by Harris found in a hospital broom cupboard was sold for C$1.4 million, while in 2009 Harris‟s “The Old Stump” fetched a record C$3.5 million. Those pioneer Scandinavian artists certainly started something!
Gustav Fjaestad “Winter Moon Light” 1895
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